Monday, November 9, 2009

everyoneconnects.net.

Question. From a marketing point of view - we're curious what exactly does everyoneconnects campaign serve? Broadband subscription? Favorable brand perception? Increase connectivity? Even if it's mobile connectivity? Promoting social media for mass acceptance? So that the rakyat won't 'potong'? How does the communication activity explains (or sells) TM's business competency? Or is this another mandatory effort to promote the Satu Malaysia konsep? Hmm.

While we think this is one of the most viral campaigns we've seen so far in Malaysia (no doubt with a big fat budget to boost), we're just curious - what kind of ROI does this justify for a connectivity monopolist?

Compare with BT's version of social media communication which is mainly to promote collaboration (same concept) across the enterprise in 170 countries, connecting 110,000 employees. Catering to the Digital Generation (same insight), BT understands that collective wisdom could perhaps propel the company faster than when it's not on social media. Some of BT's efforts in leveraging on social media:

1) BTpedia (BT's own version of wikipedia) enabling information sharing with 800 over articles and growing within the company2) BT Collaborate allowing project teams to edit and add comments within minutes internally as well as promoting effective knowledge sharing amongst all team members3) Blogging - from senior managers engaging their teams to executives sharing their learning experience from trainings4) BT Today wiring employees to the latest news and happenings via an online newsdesk5) MY BT - an enterprise social network similar to Facebook provides great functionality by allowing employees to connect with each other through their individual skill sets6) Podcast to encourage user-generated content via audio and video material

Although the sound business case of ROI was unclear initally, for the deployment of social media in such scale but Richard Dennison (Senior Manager - Social Media at BT) believes that the value it adds on to the business is self-evident.

While we believe that social media is the future, but we're hardpressed to force fit the tool into practice just because it's trendy. The best part about social media is it could help you to solve almost anything if it's used strategically and its integrity respected. That includes solving non-existent problems. Social media solves future problems before they occur if the power to anticipate is accounted as part of the communication strategy. That's simply because communicationcan solve almost everything. Perhaps TM should reconsider its 2.0 strategy to focus inward instead, building employees collaborative skill sets which in turn contributes to the building of the company. Then again, this is just our two cents worth.